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Creative Pod has used the following skills/services in the project.
Light Up Trails works to create unique and art-focused light trails at different locations in the UK. They created their first event in 2020 at Wiston Estate in Sussex as a 1-mile Christmas light trail with the theme of ‘Hope’ for a better 2021.
Light Up Trails joined Creative Pod in October when we became their full-service outsourced marketing and design agency, covering:
From our onboarding meeting, it was clear there would have to be a quick turnaround with initial design creation and marketing strategies as the event was opening 2 months later. We agreed upon the following core objectives:
Branding and website design
The branding design was turned around very quickly, with the logo being signed off in less than a week and the website going live in less than two weeks from onboarding.
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Website design
Evolved during the course of the event, adding extra elements to increase engagement: Artists page, pop-ups, announcement messaging
Integration with Mailchimp to ensure mailing lists are constantly updated
Contact with ticketing engine so that the ticket sales website was consistent with branding
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Campaigns
School competition - We ran a school competition to reach a wider audience for the event; participants had to create a poster to promote Light Up Trails and the winner would receive a free family ticket to the event and £2500 for their school's art department as a way to encourage employees of the school to get children participating and follow the current trend of #SaveTheArts.
Social media competition - three selected people who liked any of the social pages before 30th November would receive a free family of four tickets to the event, with the aim to increase our social media following
Keyworker competition - We partnered with Blue Light Tickets to put an exclusive prized draw on their website for two people to win a free family ticket. This received over 200 entrants and we then utilised the pool of those who didn’t win to offer 25% discount on off-peak days and times, as well as extending this to all key workers via social media.
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Outsourced marketing
We had several promotional activities lined up with More Radio, including a double-page spread in the November edition of Sussex Living, and a Web Page takeover on the Sussex Living website which ran for five days in the first week of November. We also had 3 scripts running on More Radio for seven weeks from the beginning of November. The opening night to the general public also featured live Facebook coverage from Jack the Lad.
In addition, we utilised many other methods of promotion, including flyer drops to 100,000 homes in the catchment area, as well as designs on petrol pumps, phone boxes, billboards in Brighton and Horsham, and Manor Royal digital screens.
We also set up a TripAdvisor page and encouraged people via social media and paid ads who visited the event to leave reviews.
Organic Social media marketing
Light Up Trails already had Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account set up, but there was no activity on them and only had friends and family followers, as they were waiting to launch the event with the website etc. We began organic social posting every day from the week beginning the 19th of October and by the end of November they had received the following activity from a combination of paid and organic social media:
Facebook engagement increased by 5317%.
Facebook's audience has increased by 235%, which was 613 followers.
Total Facebook impressions this month were almost 800,000 which is an increase of almost 10,000%.
Instagram engagement increased by 193%, as well as followers increased by 146%.
The Twitter engagement has increased by 2606% to a total engagement of 866.
Paid Social media marketing
We started paid social media advertising on 9th November. As of December 17th, we have had the following results:
Paid Ads:
Impressions: 1,410,890
Boosted Ads:
PR Coverage
We sent out three press releases which featured in West Sussex County Times and meant we received an interview on Saturday Morning’s BBC Breakfast show. The event also featured in a variety of local event websites including Visit South East England, Littlehampton Info, Visit Brighton and Raring2Go.
Email Marketing
In order to ensure the event ran smoothly, we sent out an eblast designed on Mailchimp at the end of each week to all those attending the following week containing important information. We also sent a separate eblast each monday to those that attended the event the previous week, thanking them for their support and encouraging them to share their photos and experiences on social media and TripAdvisor.
VIP night
We had a VIP night the day before the event opened to the general public to gain mass exposure on social media. We contacted local and national press, dignities, and relevant influencers with an invite to attend with complimentary food and refreshments in return for exposure on their social media channels. We had over 500 attendants on the VIP and a lot of exposure.
